Bringing Flexibility to the Optical Metro Network in Support of 5G : Successful Metro-Haul Plenary Meeting Hosted by CTTC in Castelldefels

The Metro-Haul project is an EU funded project that has been awarded €7.7 million to fund ambitious research into the application of scalable optical networks to future 5G wireless technology and services. The objective of the project is to architect and design cost-effective, energy-efficient, agile, and programmable metro networks that are scalable for 5G access supporting next generation Internet
services, while capable of fulfilling future requirements. This work will encompass the design of all-optical metro nodes that will include full compute and storage capabilities that will interface with both 5G access and multi-Tbit/s core networks capable of elastic dimensioning.

Metro-Haul is just five months old and is already making an impact. The project web site shows that 22 separate papers, journal articles, and conference presentations have already been published or accepted for publication, and members of the consortium are starting to take their ideas to standards bodies to influence how the whole of the industry views the topics being researched by the project.

48 people from across 7 European countries have just attended a successful project plenary meeting hosted by Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya (CTTC) in Castelldefels, Catalonia. The
meeting made significant advances in agreeing the use cases to be addressed by Metro-Haul and the requirements that they place on the optical metro network and the management platforms necessary to operate the network in a flexible and dynamic way.

Miguel Ángel Lagunas, Director of CTTC, said: “We are excited to be involved in Metro-Haul and pleased to have been able to host the meeting at our facility in Castelldefels. CTTC has a long history of leading research in dynamic networking and has played a significant role in a number of EU projects. Metro-Haul will enable us to build on our previous work and help guide the work done by our 20 partners as they examine the impact of 5G networking on the future of metro networks.”

Bristol University in the UK is responsible for coordinating dissemination activities from the project. Reza Nejabati from the University commented: “Metro-Haul is off to a flying start with a host of papers and articles. The partners are really engaging with industry and the wider research community to share their ideas and take the project’s output to a wider audience. The project includes leaders in their fields and it should be no surprise that we are making such an impact so early in the project.”

Leadership and management of innovation within the Metro-Haul project has started. All of the equipment manufacturers in Metro-Haul consortium are looking forward to bringing their ideas into the project and to using the collaborative discussions to feed their own product development. Network operators have been asking for a more integrated optical networking environment as they try to build a more responsive and flexible metro network. By encouraging such high innovation impact, Metro-Haul project aims to be a significant step towards enabling a wide range of advanced services over a feature-rich optical network.

The METRO-HAUL project receives funding (G.A. 761727) from the Horizon 2020 EU research & innovation programme. For more details about the Metro-Haul project, visit the project website, follow the project on Twitter, Linked-In, or ResearchGate, or contact the project via email.